I have a chance to get some S&B small pistol primers. I've never used them.
Can I use them just like other brand SPPs?
Are they to be avoided?
The guy wants a lot for them so I gotta make sure it's okay to use them first.
Thanks in advance.

I've never used them but never heard of issues with them, either. Not common enough. On the other hand, I've never had a round of S&B ammo fail to fire, either. The V360152 is their standard small pistol/low pressure rifle primer, and the V360242 is their magnum pistol/small rifle standard primer.

I actually picked up some of the same ones you mentioned a few months back and tried them. I've never had any issues with any brands I've used, BUT the S&B's. I quit them after loading 500 rds, switched to another brand and had zero issues. I then gave the remaining 500 away to friend (during a time when primers were hard to find). My Dillon 550B primer feeder hated them! Kept flipping them over and jamming up my primer feeder (6 times maybe/500rds). Jamming my feeder is very rare with my other primers used.

I think the problem is that they are too rounded. Also seemed a bit larger than my other brands when seating into cases. It was a pain trying to get them all on one side in flip tray too. I had to do many w/fingers, rather than shaking til they all flipped over. Sounds minor but I load large amts at a time and it was frustrating...

I hear the completely-loaded ammo has been good and reliable for years, but I'll never buy any other S&B primers again. Way too much of a head ache! With that said, the ones I did finally get loaded fired fine on range, no issues there.

That's an important point. I've often had to run commercial brass through a primer pocket swager, even though it wasn't crimped, just to get Russian primers to seat well. If you have hard-to-seat primers, having them a little high is a recipe for failure to fire.

S&B primers, manufactured in Europe are best inserted on Geneva mean time. If you live in Texas, figger out the time difference from Geneva (9:00am-5:00pm Geneva time) and add that to the Texas time so the primers are installed according to their "built-in" manufacturing time.

S&B primers are a quality component that can be used in place of CCI, Fed., Winchester primers....

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I just checked my S&B primers. They are #360246 small pistol magnum. S&B's website does not list them. I see the #360242 cover also the 5.56 and 357. Anyone heard of this

They probably just decided to combine the two to simplify things, since the cups would be the same size, and dropped the separate magnum pistol number. It may or may not be a good move. You want the primer cup reasonably hard for a rifle, especially for military style floating firing pins, and IME, not all revolver firing pins are strong enough to work with those.

Unclenick, it looks to be another learning time with primers. A person would think that they would change the web site it they put the two primers together with a new number. So now I have both AR and 357 mag loads to test. FUN!! This primer/powder thing is a real pain!
thanks

Alan Jones said primers change more often than people realize and the change isn't typically publicized. As long as the pressure differences the changes produce are within about 4% of what the previous recipe did (SAAMI's pressure standard deviation assumption), I expect it isn't considered necessary to say anything. 4% is about the maximum difference I've seen even going between magnum and mild primers has made. But that's not to say it won't affect your groups.

This is one reason to keep a chronograph. As long as they don't get old enough to start corrosion welding bullets to cases, if you keep aside a few of your last batch of loads, you can chronograph them on the same day with your next batch by alternating one old/one new until they're both shot up. This ensures barrel temperature rise and changes in the light falling on the chronograph and fouling accumulation all get averaged out. You compare the average of the old ammo velocities with the average of the new, then you can make a fairly easy charge adjustment to correct for a new powder lot, and new primer lot or a different primer or different brass or whatever. If you've kept past records of loads as you've developed them you will be able to look up how many feet per second change per grain of powder you get with that bullet.

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